


E Pluribus Unum

by cridecoeur



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 11:18:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cridecoeur/pseuds/cridecoeur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That was what soldiers did - they died for the things they believed in, and John had never believed in anything more strongly than he’d believed in Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	E Pluribus Unum

**Author's Note:**

> This is a weird little fic. I wrote it as sort of comfort fic after I saw the Great Game. My comfort fic is... not like most people's. I've been sitting on it for a while, not sure whether to post it or not. I finally decided if I let it sit around I'd just keep _picking_ at it, so I might as well post it. I'm not sure I pulled off what I was trying to pull off. This really became more like a character study of Sherlock than John, even though he's hardly in it. I've stuck the poem that inspired this and from which I've taken the name of the fic, down below. It is by John Yau, who I'm willing to bet a great deal you don't know.

_It is no longer necessary for sunlight  
To reach here; this kitchen with its  
Linoleum floor; its scuffed roses_

 _The light has been here all along  
Waiting for you to reach towards it  
Like a fish tinged by light_

The thing of it is, John knew from the beginning that one day, he would probably have to bury Sherlock. Or, well, to _watch_ him being buried and to try not to throw himself bodily across Sherlock’s grave like some sort of hysterical war bride. Sherlock has enemies, real enemies - a point of fact he seemed to take some sort of perverse pride in, the utter bastard - the sort that aren’t afraid to kill people. To kill _Sherlock_.

He still isn’t prepared, when things go wrong.

He stands in 221b, in the aftermath, staring into the kitchen, where every surface holds a memory of Sherlock: equipment, experiments, the detritus of genius. He touches each object, running fingers over glass and metal. There are slides in a microscope; there is a cup filled with cold tea; there is something ungodly growing in the sink.

John can’t even make himself scrub out the sink.

He goes to bed instead, and wakes, later, in a cold sweat, the impression of Sherlock’s face before he took the shot - before the building came down around him - bright in his mind, like the afterimage of the sun behind his eyelids. He nearly doesn’t make it to the bin before he’s throwing up. He’s seen people die in worse ways, comrades in arms. But the fact that this is Sherlock makes all the difference.

Vomiting into a bin at three in the morning isn’t the best time to realize that you were in love with someone, particularly when just closing your eyes presents you with a technicolor motion-picture of their death. But John’s timing recently has been shot to fucking hell.

#

John can tell that Mycroft has seldom had to comfort another person. At least, he’s not doing very well, this time. He’s sitting on Sherlock’s couch - that’s how John’s come to think of it, as _Sherlock’s_ couch, despite the fact that it was John, himself, who bought the bloody thing - across from Mrs. Hudson. John is standing by the mantel, right beside Sherlock’s skull, one of the many things he can’t make himself bin even though he should. He is now, effectively, flat mates with a skull.

Mycroft looks elegant in his black mourning wear. Not as elegant as Sherlock would have, with his atrocious good looks and dark hair, but then John’s not in love with Mycroft - at least life has lent him that mercy. Mycroft is sitting absolutely still, apparently contemplating the tea that Mrs. Hudson has made him and that he is now allowing to grow cold. John can’t help but brace himself against the stillness and silence - Sherlock was never more dangerous than when he was still and silent, mind whirring along, on the edge of throwing himself into action, into danger, ready to take on the whole world and all her most dangerous people to prove just how intelligent he was.

God damn him.

Finally, Mycroft sets his tea down.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft says, then pauses - after a moment, he sighs. “Sherlock was far too intelligent for his own good.” Which is not untrue. “He could never have tolerated living an ordinary life.” Which was also true. “I think he would find this all very dull.”

John wants to hit him, even though he thinks the same thing. Mrs. Hudson presses one hand over her mouth, as if trying to hide how it is wobbling. Suddenly, John absolutely cannot stand how utterly fucking _mannerly_ this all is, how _trite_ everything seems, next to Sherlock’s death. He pushes away from the mantel and does not realize he’s torn through 221b until he hits the door, slamming it behind himself. People passing on the street don’t even pause, and John can feel the terrible yawning of anger build inside him.

He makes it around the corner before his leg gives out.

#

Molly seems ghost-like in the morgue, as she drifts between bodies, pale, thin - John had never noticed before how slender her wrists were, how prominent her wrist bones, how small she seemed, here, when Sherlock was not vibrating through the room. Sherlock made every place he inhabited seem larger than life, simply by his presence.

Many places seem empty, now - Baker Street, yes, but also the restaurants they once ate at and the scenes that had hosted murders, baffling thefts, faked suicides - even the taxi cabs seem smaller these days, even the park.

He watches her drift around the room and wants to be able to tell her, _we’re better off without him_ , to be able to mean it - he wants it to be true. Chasing a self-proclaimed sociopath between crime scenes, shooting people, getting kidnapped by assassins, getting strapped with explosives - those things should not have improved his life.

The fact remains that they did. Normal life, as Sherlock would say, is _dull_.

#

Harry is, as always, both terribly beautiful and utterly unlovely in her implosion. She is lent back in her kitchen chair, the soft halo of her hair catching the light, her eyes half-lidded - she resembles their mother terribly in moments like this, eyes unnaturally blue only because they are also reddening, the more she drinks from the bottle in front of her. Her skin is not yellow, not yet, but John knows one day he will have to watch her complexion shift towards cirrhosis, to watch her drink herself to death.

He once thought he could save her, somehow, the right words, the right actions. He knows better, now - he can hardly save a woman who does not even want to save herself. He has nearly used up his heartbreak for her.

“John,” she says, slurring - she has a newspaper spread out in front of her and slaps one hand down upon it. “You were a fucking lunatic, chasing after him. He was always going to get you killed. That’s why you don’t make friends with psychopaths - they get themselves killed, and they get other people killed.” She tips forward in her chair long enough to reach for the bottle, to take a long pull, straight from it. She has no pretenses in his presence. “He’d probably have killed you, himself, if you went on much longer.”

 _He was always going to get you killed_. He’d like to think that was one more lie out of thousands that she’d told him, that it was no more true than half the things thrown out in one of her drunken deliriums, but the thing of it is, he knows she’s right.

He just hadn’t realized he’d always expected to go first. That was what soldiers did - they died for the things they believed in, and John had never believed in anything more strongly than he’d believed in Sherlock.

#

John has been avoiding the kitchen since Sherlock died. He had never before realized how much of his cooking was motivated by attempts to make Sherlock eat _something_ \- he feels little motivation to cook now that he doesn’t have to try.

When he finally decides to use it, he finds a human ear in a tupperware container in the refrigerator. He has to grip the countertop tightly and take long, deep breaths to keep from doing something stupid, something that wouldn’t even help. His motivation to do stupid things has increased exponentially since he met Sherlock and that doesn’t seem to be fading with time. Now, he simply has fewer opportunities to act upon it.

He puts the ear back. He’s cohabiting with a skull and a chemistry set and bits of people, what Sherlock has left behind. He doesn’t have the motivation - God help him, he doesn’t have the _desire_ \- to change that.  
#

The surgery buzzes with activity, when he finally makes his way back. He finds Sarah standing in his office, one of her hands touching the hollow of her own throat, light. She’s looking out the window. There’s nothing to see there, just sidewalk and another building. She doesn’t turn around when he enters the room, his cane clicking against the floor. She doesn’t say anything, either, and John nearly considers walking back out, except he once shot a man without second thought, and he’s not going to turn tail and run just because he’s realized he’ll be perfectly happy to never sleep with her. As happy as he ever is, these days.

“I’m sorry,” he says, half to break the silence. “I really don’t want to do this to you, anymore.” He’s only half-certain of what he means - stringing her along, pulling her into his own emotional bleakness; she’s not going to get kidnapped for his sake, again, but that hardly makes anything better.

Sarah tips her head back, taking a shaky breath, and then turns and walks out the door, without looking back. John lets her go.

He doesn’t see any patients, that day. He doesn’t even bother coming in, the next.

#

John shouts himself out of sleep in half-afternoon, near-evening, without any memory of having fallen asleep. He swallows several times, trying not to - then throws himself out of bed, falling down to vomit in the bin. He sits back, when he’s done, staring at the wall, trying to erase the image of Sherlock beside that God-forsaken pool from his mind.

He can hear voices from below, in another room. He considers crawling back into bed - the likelihood of his falling asleep is slender, but that’s all for the better - but in the end, he walks downstairs to find Mrs. Hudson showing another man around the flat. Neither of them turn at the sound of his footsteps.

“They were very close,” she says, “Sherlock and John. And Sherlock - oh, he was always such trouble. He helped me, once, you know - he helped most of London once, I think. He wouldn’t like me to say it that way, though - he always thought it was such fun.”

“Mrs. Hudson,” John says, but she doesn’t turn.

“John,” she says. “What a good man, he was. He was good for Sherlock, really. I think they made each other happy. When they weren’t driving each other mad. Oh, but listen to me, nattering on. You don’t need to hear all this.”

John catches the past tense, and all his words stick in his throat; he freezes. When he looks down at his own hands, he notices, for the first time how pale they are, how bloodless.

The scene of Sherlock’s death plays out behind his eyes.

Moriarty steps around the corner. Sherlock levels the gun. He shoots. The world explodes in heat and light, and the roof comes down, Sherlock disappearing beneath it.

John doesn’t remember getting back up.

“Finally,” Sherlock says, and John spins around - feeling dramatic even as he does it - and there he is: Sherlock, in the… well, apparently not in the flesh. “You are abysmally slow, John.”

“You’re dead,” John says.

“An excellent deduction,” Sherlock says. “Well done.”

“ _I’m_ dead,” John says.

“Yes, you did take plenty of time figuring that out,” Sherlock says. “As if the explosion weren’t clue enough.”

“Huh,” John says. Sherlock simply stares at him, with a look that says he thinks John is a tremendous idiot, and he despairs of even having to be in his presence. To be fair, this time, John earned it.

“So,” John says. “The afterlife.”

“ _Dull_ ,” Sherlock says, sniffing. He looks off into the distance, then back at John. “But I suppose your presence will make it marginally less dull.”

“Well,” John says; he’s fairly certain that’s the closest Sherlock will ever come to saying he’s glad to see him, that he missed him. “Thanks.”

Sherlock watches him, for a moment, then turns. “Come along, John,” he says, and John does what he’s always done: he follows him.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, that basically was the Sixth Sense, without the boy who sees dead people. I never bought into that movie - how did he not notice that _no one but that boy_ talked to him? - so I'm not sure why I felt the need to write this, aside from the fact that the idea took hold and would not quite niggling me until I finally said OKAY I WILL WRITE YOU IF YOU WILL LEAVE ME ALONE. So you see how that worked out.


End file.
